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Reeven Steropes RC-1206 Review

Reeven Steropes RC-1206 Testing:

Testing of the Reeven Steropes RC-1206 will be accomplished by installing the cooler into the test system case, rather than a test bench. Most systems are built and mounted into a (relatively) sealed chassis, so this method will be used to generate the idle and load results to give a real world view as to the cooling performance one can expect, based on the test system listed below. Of course, your results may vary by several degrees due to case design, case fan placement, and ambient air temperature. The CPU load is generated by Prime 95 version 27.9 for a period of two hours, with a cooldown period of one hour after the computer has returned to an idle state. Real Temp 3.70 is used to log the temperatures with the highest and lowest averages across the four cores of the Core i7 4770K test CPU. Ambient temperatures are kept at 24 °C during the testing to minimize the effect of temperature variations. Each cooler is tested with the manufacturer-supplied thermal compound as delivered.

At idle, the Reeven Steropes RC-1206 keeps the 4770K CPU at 30 °C stock with the included fan, which is fine. With the CPU loaded, the temp jumps up to 87 °C, which is rather warm, and a bit close to my personal 90 °C limit. As for overclocking, we are at 35 °C at idle, which is again just fine, and puts it five degrees warmer than stock idle. When I crank up the overclock, things heat up considerably more, all the way to 94 °C, which to me is just too high. These are better temps than stock, but not by much.

For daily use (light to moderate load), the Steropes should be okay, but the high load temps really are not a surprise given the size of the cooler and fan. It just can't keep up in the way that larger coolers with fans that move more air can. Also working against this cooler is the way hot air ejected from the fin stack gets pushed down to the motherboard and some of it gets recirculated, as opposed to a tower-style cooler that has a better chance of pushing the hot air toward a rear case exhaust fan where it can be removed from the case. So there is a clear trade-off between low-profile and capacity. Overclocking in a small case means you have to be careful and examine your application when choosing the right CPU cooler.